Donald Trump was briefly speechless when asked about his repeated vows last year to inspect the gold at Fort Knox as part of his supposed fight against fraud and corruption.
The 79-year-old president appeared on Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson Sunday, and was questioned about his dream of frisking the Kentucky site based on a decades-old conspiracy theory that the gold reserves within have been spirited away.
Asked what happened with his planned audit of Fort Knox, Trump looked into the distance for a while before pouting and asking: “Which one are you talking about?”
Attkisson offered a gentle reminder: “There was, I think, when you first got into office you and Elon Musk talked about auditing the gold to make sure it’s there.”
Given the brief recap, Trump quickly perked up and interrupted his host to say: “Well, we wanted to go knock on the door—it’s Fort Knox, it’s a very thick door—and to see whether or not we have any gold in there.
“Because, uh, take a look at it, it’s a very interesting question. We played with that. I wonder if they left the gold in Fort Knox, because they steal a lot.”
“No need to really do that though,” Attkisson said, as Trump appeared to become singularly focused on the facility holding half of the government’s gold supply, an estimated $700 billion worth.
“Well, I don’t know, I think it’s, uh...” he began, before musing: “I do want to go to Fort Knox sometime. I want to see if the gold is there. Which I’m sure it will be.”
Billionaire Trump first publicly stated his intention to do some Fort Knox bean counting in February 2025, when he announced from Air Force One: “We hope everything’s fine with Fort Knox, but we’re going to go to Fort Knox—the favorite Fort Knox—to make sure the gold is there. If the gold isn’t there, we’re going to be very upset."
Elon Musk quickly got on board with a series of X posts about inspecting the fortress—months before the Musk-Trump bromance ended in tears.
While it seemed in this interview that Trump had no immediate memory of his plans of only a year ago, he has assured the public that he’s approaching his 80th year with a sharper mind than ever.
In October, the president revealed that he’d undergone an MRI at the Walter Reed Medical Center, describing his results as “perfect” even as he was unable to clarify why he’d undergone the scan.
More recently, Trump earlier this month boasted that he’d “aced” the three cognitive exams he’s taken over the course of his two terms as president—although he did describe the brain teasers as “hard.”
“One doctor said, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone get all questions right,’” he claimed.
